Dr. Dimitrios Kyritsis received his Diploma in Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece in 1992 and his MA and PhD from Princeton University in 1995 and 1998, respectively. Before his current appointment, he was a post-doctoral associate and a lecturer at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Yale University (2000-2002) and a faculty member in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2002-2014).
His research focuses on the areas of sustainability, laser-based reactive flow diagnostics, biofuel utilization, and electrostatically assisted atomization. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Accenture Award for excellence in advising, the University of Illinois Campus Award for excellence in teaching and a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study of the University of Illinois (2007-8). From 2005-2010 he served as the co-PI in the DOE-funded Graduate Automotive Technology Education (GATE) Center of Excellence on Automotive Biofuel Combustion Engines in the University of Illinois. He is a Fellow of the ASME, an Associate Fellow of the AIAA, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Energy Engineering, and has served in the editorial board of Combustion & Flame and the Proceedings of the Combustion Institute.
Ammonia is an easily manageable hydrogen carrier that can in principle provide carbonless combustion.聽 The project addresses the technical challenges in order for this to realize that relate mostly to controllable ignition and reduction of NOx emissions.
In this project, KU has teamed up with ATD/CPS, which is a gas-turbine developer in Abu Dhabi in order to set up in the KU campus a high-pressure combustion facility that will be used in order to test high-efficiency, low-carbon-footprint combustion innovations.
Infrared and visual image data will be collected and processed with AI techniques in order to determine in situ the composition and temperature of stack flares, which constitute a serious loss and a substantial contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.聽 The project is envisioned as a pilot project that will build a bridge between laser-based reactive flow diagnostics and AI.
Recent advances in catalytic chemistry point to the possibility of producing fuels from CO2 and H2 that will come from water electrolysis with solar energy.聽 The project aims towards technologies that will establish a clean and controllable 鈥渞eversible鈥� combustion, where the cost required by the second law will be paid through solar energy.
In this project, the fundamentals are investigated of electrostatically manipulated bioalcohol fuel sprays and flames.聽 The effect on sprays stems from the virtual elimination of surface tension through electrostatic charging and the effect on flames is due to the fact that any flame generates a dilute plasma of chemi-ions.聽
